Political Segregation Research Articles

The Role of Networks in Mobilization for Ethnic Minority Interest Parties

AbstractRecently, parties that are run by and for ethnic minority citizens with a migration background have become more prominent. They can be considered a manifestation of ethnic political segregation. A key example of such a party is DENK in the Netherlands. So far, the explanatory literature has focused on how programmatic considerations drives voting for these parties. Other factors, such as the role of social networks in mobilization, have received limited testing and limited exploration in more detail. Furthermore, the literature on social networks is mainly based on majority populations. To inform our understanding of the role of social networks in voting (in general but also particularly among ethnic minority communities and for ethnic minority interest parties) this paper analyzes the voting behavior for DENK focusing on the role of personal, online and religious networks. The paper uses both qualitative interviews (with bicultural youth in the third largest city of the Netherlands in 2022) and quantitative surveys (the 2021 Dutch Ethnic Minority Electoral Study). Our analysis points to the importance of religious and personal networks for voting for DENK, whereas online networks appear to be less relevant.

Attraction to politically extreme users on social media.

Political segregation is a pressing issue, particularly on social media platforms. Recent research suggests that one driver of segregation is political acrophily-people's preference for others in their political group who have more extreme (rather than more moderate) political views. However, acrophily has been found in lab experiments, where people choose to interact with others based on little information. Furthermore, these studies have not examined whether acrophily is associated with animosity toward one's political out-group. Using a combination of a survey experiment (N = 388) and an analysis of the retweet network on Twitter (3,898,327 unique ties), we find evidence for users' tendency for acrophily in the context of social media. We observe that this tendency is more pronounced among conservatives on Twitter and that acrophily is associated with higher levels of out-group animosity. These findings provide important in- and out-of-the-lab evidence for understanding acrophily on social media.

Twitter and divides in the Dutch parliament: social and political segregation in the following, @-mentions and retweets networks

ABSTRACT MPs communication on Twitter with other MPs may facilitate forming cross-party solidarity networks and provide public micro deliberation but may also be segregated leading to information bubbles and political polarization. That party-based division lines are running through the online communication networks of politicians is a well-established finding in social media studies; however important knowledge gaps have remained on the complexity of Twitter’s multilayered network developments and their interrelatedness with socio-demographic segregation. Here, we integrate the online-network literature with that on the political consequences of the digital architecture of social media platforms to theorize and scrutinize the extent to which and why Twitter following, @-mentioning and retweeting networks among MPs are segregated along party lines and sex, age and ethnicity. Our unique dynamic take allows us to rigorously study network segregation, including feedback mechanisms between Twitter layers, based on descriptive network statistics and SIENA analyses for Dutch MPs at three time points. The findings show that political segregation patterns are strongest within the retweet layer and weakest for @-mentions. The interrelations between the Twitter network layers aggravate party-based segregation over time. MP Twitter networks are not consistently segregated along social dimensions.

Reputations for treatment of outgroup members can prevent the emergence of political segregation in cooperative networks

Reputation systems promote cooperation and tie formation in social networks. But how reputations affect cooperation and the evolution of networks is less clear when societies are characterized by fundamental, identity-based, social divisions like those centered on politics in the contemporary U.S. Using a large web-based experiment with participants (N = 1073) embedded in networks where each tie represents the opportunity to play a dyadic iterated prisoners’ dilemma, we investigate how cooperation and network segregation varies with whether and how reputation systems track behavior toward members of the opposing political party (outgroup members). As predicted, when participants know others’ political affiliation, early cooperation patterns show ingroup favoritism. As a result, networks become segregated based on politics. However, such ingroup favoritism and network-level political segregation is reduced in conditions in which participants know how others behave towards participants from both their own party and participants from the other party. These findings have implications for our understanding of reputation systems in polarized contexts.

Micro Effects on Macro Structure in Social Networks

How do individuals’ network selection decisions create unique network structures? Despite broad sociological interest in the micro-level social interactions that create macro-level network structure, few methods are available to statistically evaluate micro-macro relationships in social networks. This study introduces a general methodological framework for testing the effect of (micro) network selection processes, such as homophily, reciprocity, or preferential attachment, on unique (macro) network structures, such as segregation, clustering, or brokerage. The approach uses estimates from a statistical network model to decompose the contributions of each parameter to a node, subgraph, or global network statistic specified by the researcher. A flexible parametric algorithm is introduced to estimate variances, confidence intervals, and p values. Prior micro-macro network methods can be regarded as special cases of the general framework. Extensions to hypothetical network interventions, joint parameter tests, and longitudinal and multilevel network data are discussed. An example is provided analyzing the micro foundations of political segregation in a crime policy collaboration network.

Blue and Red Fields: Political Segregation and Pay Inequity in the Labor Market

Blue and Red Fields: Political Segregation and Pay Inequity in the Labor Market

A critical examination of the impact of power relations on the management of walled Nicosia's architectural heritage

PurposeThe contested urban fabric of walled Nicosia is closely connected with narratives of conflict that materialise in the historic built environment of the city. Following the 1974 permanent division of the island of Cyprus, management of its capital's urban heritage is realised through a dual approach between the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot Municipalities. In many circumstances, this duality is manifested in the historic built environment of the city, which in turn affects public engagement and perception. The purpose of this study is to examine the impact on power relations following the political division of Nicosia, in order to unveil existing parameters affecting its heritage and heritage management. Methodology/approachFollowing a systematic review of relevant literature on Nicosia and the concept of power, this paper examines the manifestation of power relations on the tangible fabric of its walled city. To ensure the reliability of the study, the empirical findings of the researcher are supported by interviews with relevant stakeholders. In this vein, a focused analysis of stakeholders’ perceptions, roles and interactions in the heritage management process and the various issues associated with this imbalance of power are examined, demonstrating the significance of the concept in contested environments such as that of walled Nicosia. FindingsThe results expand on considerations beyond tangible division and raise concerns linked to funding difficulties, public participation, and administrative limitations deriving from the political segregation of the island. The relevance of stakeholder engagement on the planning and wider management of walled Nicosia's contested heritage is further highlighted through the interview findings. Originality/valueThis research contributes to the academic discussion about Nicosia's heritage by introducing new topics associated with the division of the city. These include issues derived from the ongoing power imbalance between - and within - the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot Municipalities, and the subsequent impact these have on heritage. In doing so, the creation and dissemination of new knowledge on the particularities of the walled city is achieved. These in turn seek to encourage a more informed heritage protection on either side of the divide respectively.

Homophily and acrophily as drivers of political segregation.

Political segregation is an important social problem, increasing polarization and impeding effective governance. Previous work has viewed the central driver of segregation to be political homophily, the tendency to associate with others who have similar views. Here we propose that, in addition to homophily, people's social tie decisions are driven by political acrophily, the tendency to associate with others who have more extreme political views (rather than more moderate). We examined this using a paradigm in which participants share emotions and attitudes on political policies, observe others' responses and choose which others to affiliate with. In four studies (N = 1,235), both liberal and conservative participants' social tie decisions reflected the presence of acrophily. We found that participants who viewed peers who expressed more extreme views as more prototypical of their political group also tended to engage in greater acrophily. These studies identify a previously overlooked tendency in tie formation.

Political coherence and certainty as drivers of interpersonal liking over and above similarity.

Affective polarization and political segregation have become a serious threat to democratic societies. One standard explanation for these phenomena is that people like and prefer interacting with similar others. However, similarity may not be the only driver of interpersonal liking in the political domain, and other factors, yet to be uncovered, could play an important role. Here, we hypothesized that beyond the effect of similarity, people show greater preference for individuals with politically coherent and confident opinions. To test this idea, we performed two behavioral studies consisting of one-shot face-to-face pairwise interactions. We found that people with ambiguous or ambivalent views were nonreciprocally attracted to confident and coherent ingroups. A third experimental study confirmed that politically coherent and confident profiles are rated as more attractive than targets with ambiguous or ambivalent opinions. Overall, these findings unfold the key drivers of the affability between people who discuss politics.

Counter-radicalization, Islam and Laïcité: policed multiculturalism in France’s Banlieues

ABSTRACT What is the impact of counter-radicalization policies on minority membership in France? Probably more than any country in Europe, in France, the question of terrorism and radicalization has been inseparable from that of the accommodation of the Muslim minority – a debate structured around the French interpretation of universalist secularism, or laïcité. Laïcité is presented as both a principle of terrorism prevention and an ideal to safeguard. Avoiding communautarisme, the retreat of minority populations into cultural and political segregation, is what is at stake. If we follow this logic, counter-radicalization policies should be one step further into France’s assimilationist and resolutely anti-multiculturalist system. Drawing on fieldwork in two suburbs on the outskirts of Paris, Pantin and Villeneuve-Saint-Georges, this article argues however that current practices of everyday anti-terror policing end up enacting precisely what they are trying to avoid, resulting instead in what I define as “policed multiculturalism”.

Fortress tourism: exploring dynamics of tourism, security and peace around the Virunga transboundary conservation area

This paper examines the role of tourism in promoting peace around transboundary protected areas (TBPA) in conflict-affected regions through a case study of the Virunga TBPA straddling the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Uganda. Also praised as ‘peace parks’, TBPAs embody the rationale that stimulating a tourism economy in shared conservation spaces will provide incentives for formerly antagonistic states and actors to cooperate. Virunga TBPA exemplifies this strategy by promoting high-end gorilla tourism in a region scarred by longstanding conflict. Drawing on twelve months of fieldwork, we found that these optimistic aspirations are contradicted by militarisation of the three National Parks constituting the TBPA, as well as prevalence of violence and political segregation among the countries. As park authorities sell ‘feelings of security’ by framing their neighbours as threats in order to attract visitors, intrastate competition and conflict intensifies. Peace tourism rhetoric and revenues allow the governments to justify and finance the militarisation as necessary to protect ‘their’ tourists while concealing their security interests in protecting national borders. This contradiction between tourism’s ostensive ‘peace dividend’ and the violence it generates within transboundary conservation efforts poses the question: what kind of ‘peace’ can be generated through tourism, and for whom?

Expressing Chinese-ness: An Alternative Imagery among Young Chinese Indonesians

After the 1998 reformation, Chinese Indonesians become more open in expressing their identity in the public sphere in everyday life. However, a pivotal moment for Chinese Indonesians began with Ahok’s engagement with the political life, even though he then tripped in a political ploy that finally turned off Chinese collective hope for equality. On the one hand, anti-Chinese sentiment was reproduced as a tool for political segregation. On the other hand, young Chinese Indonesians are actively expressing their identity and political preferences through social media. We argue that the expressions shared publicly by young Chinese Indonesians might portray a different reflection of identity which is closely related to the political changes of the contemporary Indonesian society. Through their public expressions, new imagery of Chinese Indonesian was created as an alternative to the state-forced imagery on their Chinese-ness. This paper elaborates on how the current imagery produced and reproduced by young Chinese Indonesians through new mediums of social media in response to the continuous political conflict in their daily life.

Melancholic Nostalgia, Identity Crisis, and Adaptation in 1950s Hong Kong: Ba Jin’s Family on Screen

Abstract The communist takeover of mainland China in 1949 created physical, cultural, and political segregation between the mainland and Hong Kong, thus fostering a sense of dislocation and alienation among filmmakers who had migrated to Hong Kong from the mainland. The aim of this study is to explore the symbiosis between nostalgia and adaptation in Hong Kong cinema within the cultural landscape of 1950s Hong Kong, when Cold War politics was operating. With a detailed analysis of the 1953 Hong Kong film adaptation of mainland writer Ba Jin’s novel Family, and a comparative reading with the mainland film version produced in 1956, this study illustrates the cultural and historical significance of nostalgia in the development of Hong Kong cinema. This article further argues that nostalgic sentiment was expressed effectively through adaptations, while simultaneously improving these adaptations artistically and strengthening their political alignment with the mainland.

Fostering Grassroots Civic Nationalism in an Ethno-nationally Divided Community in Northern Ireland

ABSTRACT Much of Northern Ireland remains divided as it continues to transition from a prolonged ethno-national struggle during a period of violence known as “the Troubles” (1969–1998). This conflict resulted in the loss of thousands of lives, residential segregation and the construction of “peace walls” that separate the two ethno-national communities (i.e. “Catholic”/republican and “Protestant”/loyalist) in parts of many of its cities and towns. Residential segregation and violent national projects in cities such as Belfast not only reflect wider regional national tensions; they often are the foundation from which the ethno-national conflicts first emerged and continue to persist and reinforce the non-inclusionary fissures between two communities. Exclusionary national ideologies, narratives and practices, manifested through parading, sectarian political murals and residential segregation demonstrate how many embody a restrictive vision of national identity. However, there are a few notable exceptions to these discriminatory practices – one of which is the subject of this paper. 174 Trust is a community centre in the divided northwest side of Belfast that is designed and dedicated to providing an inclusive, safe and “shared” place to foster a new form of civic nationalism. Through an analysis of their contemporary efforts to transform exclusionary historical expressions of nationalism by fostering a shared civic nationalism, this paper interrogates nationalism by focusing on a significant grassroots effort that may be overlooked in general investigations. As I suggest, the lessons offered by this community centre exemplify the potential of a micro-political approach and serve as a powerful model for future development within this and other divided communities.

Politics At Work

We study the role of politics in the labor market using new data on the political affiliation of the near-universe of private sector workers and business owners in Brazil over the 2002-2017 period. We establish three main facts. First, there is substantial political segregation in the workplace: workers of the same political party work together. Second, business owners of a given party are more likely to employ workers belonging to the same party. These results are mainly driven by owners’ preferences for workers of their own party, rather than workers’ preferences for co-partisan co-workers. Third, we uncover a large political wage premium: within a firm, workers of the same political party of the business owner are paid more. All these empirical facts are larger in magnitudes than analogous ones we establish along gender and racial lines. Our findings highlight the importance of individual political views in shaping firm behavior and labor market outcomes.

Racialising Amateurism

Though their cultural births coincided, punk and rap musicians performed in New York City for at least seven years before they endeavoured any substantial creative interactions. Musicians, critics, and fans referred to both punk and rap as ‘primitive’; however, this article compares the acceptance and celebration of punk as ‘primitive’ with inverted judgments of shared qualities in rap music. Specifically, this article considers New York punk in the 1970s as a white racial project. Persistent stereotypes in white music media, particularly rock criticism, constructed the discursive meanings of punk and rap, while institutional and political segregation structured this distinction. Artistic ‘amateurism’, thus, functions as a celebratory term only when we give such art the benefit of the doubt – that it is not mere ineptness, that it is fruitful, that it is intentional, or that it is subversive. This benefit, in this case, is a white privilege.

How Ambient Cues Facilitate Political Segregation.

People increasingly self-segregate into politically homogeneous communities. How they do this remains unclear. We propose that people use ambient cues correlated with political values to infer whether they would like to live in those communities. We test this hypothesis in five studies. In Studies 1 (n = 3,543) and 2 (n = 5,609), participants rated community cues; liberals and conservatives' preferences differed. In Studies 3a (n = 1,643) and 3b (n = 1,840), participants read about communities with liberal or conservative cues. Even without explicit information about the communities' politics, participants preferred communities with politically congenial cues. In Study 4 (n = 282), participants preferred politically congenial communities and wanted to leave politically uncongenial communities. In Study 5 (n = 370), people selectively navigated their communities in a politically congenial way. These studies suggest that peoples' perceptions of communities can be shaped by subtle, not necessarily political, cues that may facilitate growing political segregation.

Futebol e migração: a perspectiva dos treinadores brasileiros no exterior

O fluxo migratório nos esportes é definido como o movimento entrada/saída de atletas entre países. Causas e consequências são mutáveis e definidas de acordo com características globais. Apesar de sua importância no esporte, os treinadores não possuem o mesmo peso nesse processo. O objetivo desse estudo foi compreender a visão dos treinadores sobre o fluxo migratório no futebol. Trata-se de um estudo observacional de característica qualitativa. Entrevistas semiestruturadas sobre questões inerentes ao fluxo migratório foram realizadas com 2 treinadores brasileiros de experiência internacional. Para análise dos dados nos apoiamos na Análise de Conteúdo proposta por Bardin. Concluímos que a visão dos treinadores sobre o fluxo migratório no futebol brasileiro tem aspectos diferentes dos atletas. As motivações foram o desafio profissional e novas oportunidades. Aspectos socioculturais foram as principais dificuldades. Além disso, uma possível segregação política, falta de resultados expressivos e ausência das licenças específicas fecham portas internacionais para treinadores brasileiros.

English Language Curriculum in Kosovo's Education System

Language is a system of communication, consisting of sounds and words used for the expression or exchange of ideas, concepts, knowledge. Language is our primary source of communicating. Taking in consideration that there are around 6.500 languages spoken in the world today, we find English Language as the most widely spoken language. The importance of this language cannot be denied or ignored as it is strengthened everyday by globalization and development of communication technology. As in the whole world, English Language has its own importance in Kosovo, especially in the last two decades which do succeed the end of a social, cultural and political segregation. The fast-growing importance of English Language has also forced changes in the education system of Kosovo, changes that seem to be superficial because the number of fluent English Language speakers after graduating from high school still remains low.

The extremists across the aisle: selective exposure and evaluations of presidential candidate extremity

ABSTRACTThe consensus of most scholars is that the United States is significantly polarized across lines of partisanship, ideology, beliefs, and values. This polarization also extends to media use through selective exposure to partisan television and online content. This suggests a process in which partisans view opponents as especially extreme, seek reinforcement of those views in media, and strengthen those views going forward.Using National Annenberg Election Survey panel data, this study examines relationships between political identity, cable television use, and perceptions of 2008 presidential candidates’ ideological extremity. Candidates from “across the aisle” are seen as more extreme, and this perception leads to a spiral of selective exposure, which reinforces and strengthens extant views. This process is driven by television sources that predate the Internet-based “Daily Me” model, suggesting that concerns about online echo chambers might be better focused on political segregation in general.